The Clintons
released their tax returns from 2000 to 2007 (seven years). They earned
109 million dollars, 50 million were from the trash books they wrote and
52 million dollars were from Bill Clinton’s speaking fees. It averages
to 7.4 million dollars each year for speeches given by him at
approximately 200,000 dollars a speech. He must have given 37 speeches
every year. It amounts to over three speeches a month. In addition
taxpayers picked up an expense of probably 5 to 10 million dollars for
their travel, secret service and sundry expenses.
People to whom he had
done favors or who expect future favors donated 250 million dollars to
his presidential library and towards Hillary’s presidential campaign.
Bill received 12.5 million dollars investment adviser fees from
billionaire investor Burkle over the seven years. His economic expertise
includes the passage of NAFTA which de-industrialized America with
manufacturing jobs moving to Mexico and later to China. Service jobs
moved to India.
Currently, manufacturing is 12% of US GDP and the US manufactured
imports are 14% of GDP. This makes it mathematically impossible for the
US to improve its trade deficit by exporting manufactured goods. Food
grains, commercial planes, armaments, entertainment items (movies, TV
serials, music), intellectual properties (software, pharmaceuticals,
patents) and financial sleight of hand (sub-prime securitization,
derivative, credit swap, stock, bond and commodity trading, insurance)
are the only fields where the US is leading. No wonder the
administration is pushing to strengthen intellectual property rights,
open developing countries financial (banking and insurance) markets and
refuses to reduce subsidies to its corporate farmers. This explains the
strategy to make alcohol from corn and diesel from rapeseed to reduce
American oil imports and engineer a rise in grain prices. The US annual
oil imports are nearly 500 billion dollars at present and rising due to
increased oil prices and dwindling domestic production.
The obscene enrichment of the Clintons is not unique. Reagan and Bush
Sr., raked in speaking fees and used commercial ventures (Bush through
Carlyle group and Saudi enterprises like the Bin Laden group) in the
same way. Others like Senator Phil Gramm, Rep. Bill Tauzin have steered
legislation favorable to banks and pharmaceutical companies and have
left Congress for million dollar jobs with the industries they had
oversight of. Many losing legislators have turned to lobbying and some
have moved from the Congress directly to federal prison. There is a
prevalent culture of corruption or conflict of interest running through
the very fabric of American government and other ones like Germany,
Ireland, India etc (world over).
Chancellor Kohl accepted illegal
contributions. Chancellor Schroeder after losing German elections joined
Russian company Gazprom. Recently an Irish minister had to resign for
inappropriate acceptance of political donations.
Jain havala scandal for
the BJP, coffin and Tehelka scams for George Fernandes’ party, fodder
scam for Lallu Prasad Jadhav, Bofors and fertilizer scandal for the
Congress, the Mayawati gift imbroglio, scams involving the Akali Dal and
Congress chief ministers in Punjab and others too frequent to enumerate,
confirm the pervasive culture of influence peddling and selling and
corruption, which is part of human nature and rampant in politicians.
It is patently ridiculous to claim that money only buys access. The
record of the US Supreme Court is even more blemished. When justice is
corrupted, society crumbles. It has equated campaign contributions and
pornography with free speech, given corporations the status of immortal
individuals and in the Dred Scott decision, converted individuals to
property. Its political usurpation of the presidency in favor of the
retarded idiot Bush Jr., was a travesty of justice and a judicial farce
for a right wing cabal of five, trumping their own principle of states’
rights by stopping the Florida recount.
Evolution has two specific forms of altruism, kin and reciprocal. The
first rationalizes self-sacrifice to promote the survival of a larger
number of close relatives whose combined genetic complement is identical
but greater than that of the animal that sacrifices itself. The second
is doing a favor in the hope of it being reciprocated in a group of
animals of the same species which are subject to unpredictable vagaries
of food supply in nature. Vampire bats partially vomit a blood meal
without which a fellow bat would die, and expect the favor to be
returned. Many male insects offer a dead prey to females of the species
as a meal, to obtain sex. Female chimpanzees offer sex to the males to
thwart aggression and protect future progeny by creating uncertainty of
male parentage. Perhaps the gift of flowers, jewelry and dinner for
female human dates by males has an eerie parallel. In human beings a
third form of altruism is seen when strangers rescue an unrelated
individual from drowning, slavery or holocaust.
The only one that applies for campaign contributions and speaking fees
is reciprocal altruism. The donation of tens of thousands of dollars is
done to return past favors or in anticipation of obtaining future ones.
Hillary Clinton will always be a compromised candidate with a tendency
to sell out to her big donors. The same applies to Obama, though he
claims he does not accept money from lobbyists. His ambiguous positions
on total withdrawal from Iraq, his unconditioned and total support for
Israel (a change from his prior support of Palestinian rights), and his
opposition to single payer national healthcare (administered by the
government like Medicare and Medicaid) are a clever obfuscation, to win
the nomination and presidency without challenging the powerful patriotic
nationalist defense, Israel and insurance lobbies.
Interested readers
should read Carroll’s book, “House of War”, the story of Hillary’s
healthcare plan debacle and Mearsheimer and Walt’s book on the Israel
lobby.
John McCain has over twenty lobbyists working in high posts
within his campaign, including senior-most managers. If elected he will
continue the war till we are bankrupt or run out of recruits. He has
even backed down on his opposition to torture and is even likely to
revert to his prior Keating Five scandalous behavior. His views on the
economy are socialism and rescue for the rich, and Hobbesian jungle
survival for the poor and voiceless.
There is considerable opposition to
the war amongst Democrats but it lacks the depth of commitment that was
there against the Vietnam War. There is no military draft and the
children of the middle class are not in jeopardy. The wealthy like
Cheney and Bush Jr., have always escaped personal sacrifice and are eager
to fight till the last poor American is dead.
Very few people understand that America is not a true democracy. It was
established as a Republic, with the vote limited to propertied free
white males. A lot has changed, but the president is not elected by
popular vote but by the electoral vote. Delegates constituting the
electors may be morally bound to vote like their constituents, but are
not legally bound to do so. This is why many states have caucuses and
the Democrats have super-delegates to counter and thwart the public
vote. The Republicans prefer to use the Supreme Court for similar
nefarious purposes. Madison, the father of the Constitution was deathly
afraid of the tyranny of the majority, which he observed during the Shay
and Whiskey rebellions and like John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court who stated that those who own the country (monetary and
land assets) should rule it, believed in the same principles. Alexander
Hamilton was even more restrictive and favored the bankers, merchants
and manufacturers over the landowners.
Throughout its history the American government and politicians have been
hired hacks of vested interests. They have exploited the masses who
everywhere are stupid, ignorant and apathetic. There have been periods
of populist uprising and gradually and grudgingly, the elite have made
concessions, but only enough to prevent open revolt, revolution or
mayhem. Even the 1776 War of Independence was fought because the rich
resented their lack of real power and subservient status to the upper
class British overlords and wanted to extinguish their debts of
profligate living, incurred by aping the titled British amongst them.
The poor were incited to rebel, because the British and their treaties
with the Indians forbade westward expansion and prevented the poor from
grabbing oodles of fertile land, which they coveted.
Similar false explanations are propagated that the Civil War was to
abolish slavery, despite Lincoln’s clear statement that it was to
preserve the Union and he was willing not to free the “blacks”, if he
could save the Union without doing so. In fact he kept slavery in the
Union States (Maryland, Kentucky etc.) , while issuing an edict to
abolish it in the Confederate States.
Similar false pretenses were used to start the Mexican War and deprive
Mexico of half a dozen present southwestern states by unprovoked
American aggression. Spain was bilked of Florida, Cuba, Puerto Rico,
Philippines and Guam under false pretexts. The lie and fraud of the
Tonkin resolution were used for the Vietnam War, secrecy and lies to
bomb Cambodia and Laos, Monroe Doctrine to exploit Central and South
America, lies to attack Grenada and Panama and false WMD pretexts to
start the Iraq War.
Thus no matter which of the three hypocrites contending for the
presidency wins, do not expect any change for the better. Even if one of
them suddenly acquires honesty, integrity and intelligence by being
struck by lightning, the disastrous policies from Truman, Eisenhower,
Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter and Bush Sr., have blunted our
options. Like one story of the universe with a Big Bang that led to
expansion of the universe, followed by inflation, then slowing of
expansion and finally the recently postulated accelerated expansion
likely to proceed to a dark cold end, America has been put on a
trajectory of disaster by its lying, corrupt, greedy and stupid
presidents and congresses with the tacit consent of its ignorant, stupid
and apathetic populace. There was this strange inflation due to Johnson,
Nixon and Carter. The temporary slowing was a false respite under Reagan
who with his massive deficits started the new accelerated decline.
Clinton, selfish and obsessed with power and other lusts, knowingly (he
ain’t stupid) and Bush Jr., by his stupidity, steered us to a cold dark
end, due to our debt load, de-industrialization, trade, budget and
current account deficits and exorbitant arms and war spending.
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